Diffuse midline gliomas are the most common solid tumors in children, and they are difficult to detect and treat. Molecular tools are needed to aid diagnosis and treatment. Here, Dr Saratsis discusses her research, published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications, examining if tumor-associated DNA could be isolated in CSF from children with brain tumors and sequenced for the presence of histone H3 mutations.

To celebrate Earth Week 2017 and Earth Day, Dr Srimathy Sriskantharajah, the Associate Publisher of Life Sciences, and Chris McEntee, Journal Development Editor tell us how important engaging and educating the community is when it comes to protecting our environment.

EyesOnALZ – a project to crowdsource Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research – has launched an online month-long competition to #CrushALZ in the Stall Catchers citizen science game, in partnership with The Crowd & The Cloud – a public television documentary series about citizen science.

Despite sleep impairments occurring in all subtypes in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), their causes still remain unclear. In a study published today in Molecular Brainresearchers used electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) to examine whether a gene mutation coding for neuroligin affected sleep pattern and quality in mice. Here an author of the study, Jackie J. Liu tells us more.

Pet owners often wax lyrical about how their pets enrich their lives, but did you know pets can affect us at a more microscopic level? Research published today in Microbiome by Anita Kozyrskyj and colleagues show that exposure to household pets leads to changes in infant gut microbiota that in turn could reduce infant obesity.

Approximately 2% of the DNA in the genomes of modern humans of non-African descent comes from Neandertals and recent studies have shown this DNA contributes to a number of phenotypes. New research published today Genome Biology looks at introgressed archaic DNA and explores the extent to which it influences modern human phenotypes.